Not only you see garbage everywhere in Vietnam, be it cities, countryside, waterways, on peoples backyards and people living within it like it was the natural environment, but on our way from Dalat to Nha Trang we witnessed another thing that seemed quite appalling even to us… I mean that we are not one of those, by western hygienic standarts, totally screwed up people that are afraid of any invisible microbe that we might touch or god forbid eat, but seeing what we’d seen I admit that we were a little disgusted.

Imagine following setup:
Public toilets of Vietnamese (meaning not really clean to start with) standards, where anybody can see any man peeing into a concrete trough. Next to it there is a big concrete open vat between the men and women toilets. In this vat full of water there are plastic flat-bottom ladles floating on the surface for people to ladle the water for hand washing. Now imagine a dirty man first gathering all he has in his throat and then spitting his findings on the floor just next to the tank on his approach to it. He subsequently ladles the water into the plastic ladle and starts washing his hands. However, although most people just pour water on their hands, holding the ladle in one hand and pouring the water on their other hand, this man squats, puts the full container on the ground right to the place where his spit landed just seconds ago and starts washing his hands right inside of the container. This technique is no doubt more effective in actually removing any dirt or germs from the hands, but on the other hand is transferring dirt from his hands into the container and subsequently right into the water in the big concrete vat. To top this you can surely imagine what could stick to the bottom of the container when he placed it on the ground…
OK, now you’ve got the fist part of the picture. Continue imagining… A young pretty girl approaches the vat seconds later and since it is morning and she is undoubtedly a clean girl she has a toothbrush in her right hand. She makes the last step to the vat, ladles a ladle full of water from the very same tank where our man deposited germs and similar “interesting” things seconds ago and she uses this water to brush her teeth with, gargle etc., sipping the water right from the container that has been used by hundreds of people before her.

I’m not sure how vivid an imagination you posses but I’m pretty sure that by now you are quite disgusted and are shaking your head the same as we were…